Hui stared down at the two interlopers, neither of whom showed any self-awareness, but who instead shamelessly stared back, openly stealing his qi. He sighed out and shook his head, giving up. It’s fine. Jin Xian isn’t absorbing much, nor is Fatty. I can still cultivate the ghoul skin despite their presence.

“I can’t find any… oh, you found something?” Bai Xue said. He set down the empty bucket he’d found and walked over beside Hui. His brows furrowed. “Er… what, exactly, are you cultivating right now?”

“All of them, I guess,” Hui grumbled under his breath.

“Bold. Only a genius like my Hui would be so bold!” Bai Xue praised him, scruffing his hair. He sighed out and ran his fingers through Hui’s hair, lifting it up to rub it against his cheek. “Ah… I missed you, Hui’s real hair. So soft…”

Hui pressed his lips together again, even more annoyed. Is everyone taking advantage of me right now? Ahh, it’s fine, Bai Xue, just go ahead and grope me! Dammit! Do I have a sign on my forehead telling everyone to jump in, right now?

“Well, if you say so…” Bai Xue said, shrugging.

Oh, shit, did I say that aloud? Hui jumped back. “Elder Sister! Please forgive this small cultivator, I didn’t mean to speak my thoughts!”

“But I like those thoughts. Go ahead and keep speaking them,” Bai Xue said, approaching with his hands out.

Hui dodged around the far side of the coffin, still supplying blood qi. Fatty flapped after him to follow the stream of fresh qi directly from the gem. “It was sarcasm! Sarcasm!”

“What’s a sarcasm? Can I grope it?” Bai Xue said.

“Bai Xue! I’m in the middle of serious cultivation here!” Hui cried.

At that, Bai Xue grinned and stepped back. “I was only teasing. You gave me such a nice opening. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t thrust into it.”

Hui opened his mouth, then shut it. Bai Xue, your phrasing…

To his surprise, Bai Xue walked over and knelt by Fa Chuyou. He checked her over again, then fed a pill delicately into her mouth. Sitting with his legs tucked under him, he set her head on his lap. “Ah… when she’s asleep, Fa Chuyou isn’t too bad.”

“Is that so?” Hui asked, glad Bai Xue had found a new target.

Bai Xue nodded. “I’ll act as your Dao Protector. Go ahead and refine your corpses. As long as I’m here, Fa Chuyou will remain in a gentle sleep. You don’t want her to see your real face, right?”

Hui bowed. “Thank you, Elder Sister!” That’s a weight off my mind. I was worried she’d wake up in the middle, but with my ghoul skin still being refined, there was nothing I could do! Now I can focus on cultivation without worrying about Fa Chuyou maybe waking up and trying to attack me in the middle.

“I don’t want her to see your real face, either,” Bai Xue murmured, stroking Fa Chuyou’s hair out of her face.

“Eh? What was that?” Hui asked.

Bai Xue beamed at him. “Nothing!”

With Bai Xue and Fa Chuyou taken care of, Hui focused all his attention on the corpse refining coffin. The scrap of snake shed glowed, releasing heat and a hint of the quasi-Immortal qi Fa Chuyou had spoken about earlier. Hui reached out for it, probing that drop of qi with his. It resisted. The blood qi began to boil, and thick red mist billowed off the coffin. The snake shed trembled. Power built up inside it, the quasi-Immortal qi threatening to explode again.

Come on! Hui furrowed his brows. He jerked his qi back. The scrap of snake shed cooled down again, and the blood qi settled to a simmer. He hovered outside the quasi-Immortal qi, slowly feeling it out. As he did, he adapted his own qi to be more like it, not in terms of power, but in terms of fluctuations. He slowly approached the shed again. This time, it didn’t reject him. He began to tune the shed’s fluctuations, drawing them closer to the fluctuations of the ghoul skin, and vice versa.

The snake shed began to merge into the ghoul skin. It no longer sat above the surface, a raised section sitting atop the ghoul skin, but began to sink into it. Scale patterns stretched from the scrap of shed and spread across the ghoul skin. Hui bit his lip, but kept going. If it ends up giving my ghoul skin a scale pattern, so be it! I’ll just have to master the skin-shedding technique and hide the ghoul skin under a false skin!

…Two layers of false skin? Ah! Hopefully it doesn’t come to that!

The snake scale patterns stretched across the entire skin, covering it from head to toe. Lying beside the skin, Jin Xian scooted subtly away from it, as though she was afraid she’d get infected with the snake scale pattern. Still, she didn’t leave the coffin.

“It’s your own fault if it gets on you, at this point,” Hui muttered.

He gestured, drawing death qi into his other hand. Feeding that into the ghoul skin, he nourished it with the blood qi at the same time. Slowly, the ghoul skin began to absorb the snake scale patterns, until they were almost completely gone.

Power built up in the ghoul skin, power that the snake shed fed back. As the two grew closer to one another, the waves of their fluctuations began to contain the power of both of them, clashing against one another. The waves emanated out in all directions, lashing wildly into the air. The coffin rumbled, barely containing the waves. A crack burst down its side.

The backlash hit Hui, too. Pain slashed up his arms, cutting spiraling marks up his forearms. He frowned, squinting past it. I can do it! So close, just a little further!

“Xiao Hui!” Bai Xue shouted, startled. He grabbed Fa Chuyou and leaped back. A breath later, an errant wave of power smashed into where they’d been sitting and slashed a gash three meters deep into the earth.

“I’m so close!” Hui shouted back. He pushed down at the coffin, restraining the power from above. The entire force of the slashes cut into his palms. In a second’s time, his hands were bloody and raw.

The waves grew closer and closer together, growing stronger as they did. They began to cut away Hui’s flesh down to the bone. Hui screamed, but refused to let go. Ah… dammit! I hate pain, but I can take it! This—this is nothing! Compared to that time they broke all my fingers and then stepped on my hands, it’s nothing at all!

One last wave burst out. It threw Hui into the air. His arms hung limply after him, bloodied and shattered. The red gem hovered in the air with him, knocked free of his broken hand.

Before the red gem could fall away, the red duck leaped up and snatched it in its beak. It fluttered in the air, turning to gaze to the horizon.

“No, you don’t!” Hui shot out a strand of qi and looped it around the duck, reigning it back in. I won’t let you take that red gem! It’s saved me twice now!

Fatty let out a startled quack and flew backward, toward Hui. The duck slammed into Hui’s chest with an audible thump, and together, the two fell toward earth. The duck struggled, unwilling to return to Hui or turn immaterial, clenching hard onto the red gem. Clearly it wished to take the gem and escape Hui altogether!

Hui clenched his teeth and focused. Even though he was exhausted from refining the ghoul skin, he forced himself to hold on. His eyes turned bloodshot and his body trembled, but he tightened the qi loop holding the duck to him. “You’re a part of me. Give in!”

The ground rushed up at them. Hui braced himself for impact, unable to move his arms to catch himself, or even circulate his qi properly with so much of his attention focused on the duck. This is going to hurt…!

A cool, gentle hand caught him. A light chuckle rang out on the air, and white hair tickled his nose. “Xiao Hui, you’re so cute when you’re playing the hero,” Bai Xue said, gazing down at him. She held him close, her body soft against his.

Hui grunted, unable to pay any attention to her between the pain in his arms and the duck’s struggles.

She bent her head. Hui glanced up, startled. Their lips collided.

A cool liquid passed from her mouth to his. Hui swallowed on reflex. Gentle, cold power swirled in his stomach. Carefully, he circulated it, and his wounds began to heal.

A few more breaths passed. Distracted, Hui focused internally, until he realized Bai Xue was still gazing into his eyes, her lips still pressed against his. At last, Hui yanked his head away. “E…elder Sister…”

“Oops,” Bai Xue chuckled, raising a hand to her lips.

What ‘oops!’ Hui raged internally. That was clearly intentional! You can’t fool me!

…Eh, wait. Was that… did she… steal my first kiss?

A bright red blush spread over Hui’s cheeks. He wanted to shove Bai Xue away, but his arms were ruined, so he could only turn his head away.

“Aww! So cute! So adorable, Hui, so sweet. Let me see,” Bai Xue crooned, ruffling his hair.

“Shut up! Go away! You, you stole…” Hui shouted. His hands came back to him at the same time Bai Xue landed. He leaped away, holding the duck to his chest.

“I stole? Don’t tell me, Xiao Hui, was that…?” Bai Xue’s eyes glimmered. She raised her sleeve to cover her mouth, suddenly coy.

“Sh…shut up! I don’t want to hear it!” Hui said, embarrassed. To distract himself, he wrested the gem from the duck, flicked it into his storage ring, and shoved the duck back into his dantian. It resisted, unwilling, but with the full force of Hui’s power and no pain to distract him, he managed to absorb it once more.

Bai Xue chuckled, a wide smile on her face.

Behind them, Fa Chuyou stirred, her robes swishing over the earth. She sat up slowly, squinting around. “Er… I… what happened?”

Hui dove for the coffin. Bai Xue’s expression flickered. White hair faded to red, her body changing to the stiffer form of her male form. He walked over to Fa Chuyou, putting his body casually between Hui and Fa Chuyou. “Xiao… Xie Hao said he sensed something going wrong with his… thing he had entrusted to you, and begged me to bring him here. We found you passed out.”

Fa Chuyou jumped. She shoved at Bai Xue and clawed her way upright. “The ghoul skin! Xie Hao’s body! I—if I ruined it, I—”

“Don’t worry, Elder Sister. I resolved it,” Hui said, once more clad in the ghoul skin. Aside from the flint crystals at his forehead and the backs of his hands, and his shorter hair, which only reached past his jaw, he looked much more like himself than he ever had, and almost entirely human. The ghoul skin was clear and pale, with almost a rosy tinge to it. No longer ragged and dry, its sleek black hair swayed in the wind. When he moved, a faint shimmer of snake scales appeared where the sun hit, as if his skin was laid on top of snake skin, and moving occasionally pushed a patch of scales up against the surface of his skin.

“Beautiful!” Fa Chuyou cried out. Tears welled up in her eyes, and it seemed as though she were about to cry for real. She rushed to Hui’s side and grabbed his hand. “Xie Hao, please accept my apologies. I selfishly tried to refine your ghoul skin myself, but my skills were lacking. If I had destroyed it, I could never make it up to you, nor myself, nor—nor the world, for depriving it of your beautiful dead body!”

Er… I don’t think you need to go that far, Hui thought quietly.

Wiping her eyes, Fa Chuyou shook her head. “I… I’ll find some way to repay you, trust me, Xie Hao. To think, I almost destroyed your ghoul body in my hubris… I… I’ll do anything.”

“It’s fine. Even some spirit stones will be—”

“Spirit stones? SPIRIT STONES? Never! They could never measure up to the worth of this heavenly body!” Fa Chuyou rubbed her cheek against the back of his palm.

Awkwardly caught there, Hui managed a nervous smile. “Er, Elder Sister…”

Bai Xue’s brows furrowed. He gently pulled Fa Chuyou away from Hui. “Can’t you see he’s uncomfortable?”

“Ha? Says you?” Hui muttered aloud. Who just stole my first kiss? Lascivious furnace!

“Have I ever done something uncomfortable to you?” Bai Xue asked, drawing himself to his full height. He crossed his arms.

“You—constantly!” Hui replied. You tease me all the time! How do you think that feels, Bai Xue?

“But does it feel… bad? Does it hurt?” Bai Xue pushed.

Hui grit his teeth. “You’ve never hurt me, but…”

“Ah! My apologies, touching him right in front of you… I should have considered the beautiful feelings between you,” Fa Chuyou said. She had her hands plastered across her face as though to hide her eyes, but her fingers were split wide to allow her to peek. Her pale, delicate cheeks flushed bright red, all the way to her nose. “Please, I’m not trying to get in between you two! Though… if you would also take me… Xie Hao…?”

Bai Xue harrumphed.

Feeling more awkward than ever, Hui cleared his throat. “Er, Elder Sister, things… between us… er, you may have… misunderstood, a little?”

“Between us?” Fa Chuyou sniffed.

“Between—me and Bai… Hong Xue!” Hui burst, before she could cry, then hesitated. Wait, no, between us? What ‘between us?’ Don’t tell me, does this woman also have designs on my body?

Dangerous, too dangerous! I don’t want to get caught between women! Love spats are also dangerous. This Hui needs to keep his eyes open! I never even considered that Fa Chuyou might actually like me, and not just… want my… undead body…

…no, she probably does just want my undead body. But that’s dangerous too!